The birds they sang at the break of day
"Start again," I seem to hear them say.
"Do not dwell on what has passed away
or what is yet to be."
Ah, the wars they will be fought again
The holy dove, she will be caught again
bought and sold and bought again -
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs and the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed, the marriage spent
Yeah, the widowhood of every single government -
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud.
Ah, but they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

You can add up the parts but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march on your little, broken drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

Have you noticed all the stressed babies? Maybe one in 30 I see has glowing eyes, which I take as a sign of thriving. What's up? Perhaps ignorance about babies and their needs. Here are 10 things to know.

1. Babies are social mammals with social mammalian needs. Social mammals emerged more than 30 million years ago with intensive parenting (a developmental nest or niche). This is one of the many (extra-genetic) things that evolved other than genes. This developmental nest is required for an individual to develop properly. Intensive parenting practices for babies include years of breastfeeding to develop brain and body systems, nearly constant touch and physical presence of caregivers, responsiveness to needs preventing distress, free play with multi-aged playmates, and soothing perinatal experiences. Each of these has significant effects on physical health.

2. Human babies are born "half-baked" and require an external womb. Humans are born way early compared to other animals: 9 months early in terms of mobility and 18 months early in terms of bone development and foraging capacities. Full-term babies have 25% of adult brain volume and most of it grows in the first 5 years. Thus, the human nest for its young evolved to be even more intense than for other social mammals because of the underdeveloped newborn, lasting for 3-5 years. Humans also added to the list of expected care a village of positive social support for both mother and baby. Actually, human brain development lasts into the third decade of life, suggesting that social support and mentoring continue at least that long.

3. If adults mess up on the post-birth “baking,” longterm problems can result. Each of the caregiving practices mentioned above has longterm effects on the physical health but also social health of the individual. For example, distressing babies regularly or intensively (by not giving them what they need) undermines self-regulatory systems. This is common knowledge in other cultures and was so in our past. In Spanish, there is a term used for adolescents and adults who misbehave: malcriado (misraised).

4. Babies thrive on affectionate love. When babies receive food and diaper changes and little else, they die. If they receive partial attention and stay alive, it is still not enough—they won’t reach their full potential. Urie Bronfenbrenner, who emphasized the multiple systems of support that foster optimal development, said that babies do best when at least one person is crazy about them. Others have noted that children grow best with three affectionate, consistent caregivers. In fact, babies expect more than mom and dad for loving care. Babies are ready for a community of close, responsive caregivers that includes mother nearby.

5. Babies’ right hemisphere of the brain is developing rapidly in the first three years. The right hemisphere develops in response to face-to-face social experience, with extended shared eye gaze. The right hemisphere governs self-regulatory systems. If babies are placed in front of screens, ignored or isolated, they are missing critical experiences.

6. Babies expect to play and move. Babies expect to be “in arms” or on the body of the caregiver most of the time. Skin-to-skin contact is a calming influence. After learning this one of my students when at a family gathering took a crying baby and held it to his neck, which calmed it down. Babies expect companionship not isolation or intrusion. They expect to be in the middle of community social life. They are ready to play from birth. Play is a primary method for learning self-control and social skills. Companionship care—friendship, mutual responsiveness and playfulness—builds social and practical intelligence. Babies and caregivers share intersubjective states, building the child’s capacities for the interpersonal “dances” that fill social life.

7. Babies have built-in warning systems. If they are not getting what they need, babies let you know. It is best, as most cultures have long known, to respond to a baby’s grimace or gesture and not to wait till crying occurs. Young babies have difficulty stopping crying once it starts. The best advice for baby care is to sensitively follow the baby, not the experts.

8. Babies lock their experiences into procedural memory vaults that will be inaccessible but apparent in later behavior and attitudes. Babies can be traumatized from neglecting the list of needs above. They won’t forget. It will undermine their trust of others, their health and social wellbeing, and lead to self-centered morality which can do much destruction to the world.

9. Culture does not erase the evolved needs babies have. Babies cannot retract their mammalian needs. Yet, some adult cultures advocate violating evolved baby needs as if they do not matter and despite the protests of the baby. Everyday violations include baby isolation like sleeping alone, “crying it out” sleep training, infant formula, or baby videos and flashcards.* When violations occur regularly, at critical time periods or are intense, they undermine optimal development. These violations are encoded in the baby’s body as the optimal development of systems is undermined (e.g., immunity, neurotransmitters, endocrine systems like oxytocin). Surprisingly, some developmental psychologists think it fine to violate these needs** in order for the child to fit into their culture.

The rationalization of “culture over biology” reflects a lack of understanding not only of human nature but of optimal development. This has occurred in laboratories with other animals whose natures were misunderstood. For example, Harry Harlow, known for his experiments with monkeys and “mother love,” at first did not realize he was raising abnormal monkeys when he isolated them in cages. Similarly, at least one of the aggressive rat strains used in lab studies today was first created when scientists isolated offspring after birth, again not realizing the abnormality of isolation. Note how the cultural assumptions of the scientists created the abnormal animals. So it matters what cultural assumptions you have.

The culture-over-biology view may be doing the same thing with human beings. By not understanding babies and their needs, we are creating species-atypical human beings. We can only know this to be the case in light of knowledge about human beings who develop under evolved conditions (the "developmental nest" described in point 1): typically, small-band hunter-gatherers. They are much wiser, perceptive and virtuous than we humans in the USA today (see NOTE below).

Thus the final point:

10. Experiences that consistently violate evolution undermine human nature. When species-atypical childrearing occurs, we end up with people whose health and sociality are compromised (which we can see all over the USA today with epidemics of depression, anxiety, high suicide and drug use rates***). Such mis-raised creatures might do all right on achievement tests or IQ measures but they may also be dangerous reptiles whose world revolves around themselves. A lot of smart reptiles (“snakes in suits”) on Wall Street and elsewhere have been running the country into the ground.

What to do?

(1) Inform others about the needs of babies.

(2) Be aware of the needs of babies around you and interact sensitively with the babies you encounter.

(3) Support parents to be sensitive to the needs of their babies. This will also require many more institutional and social supports for families with children, including extensive parental leave which other developed nations provide. It's an uphill battle right now but raising awareness is the first step.

(4) Read and learn from books that convey the evolved principles of caregiving, like the following:

* Note that sometimes violations (e.g., formula, isolation) are required under emergency conditions that are matters of life and death. Also note: In a way, USA culture forces parents into these violations because there is no extended family or community support to help provide for all the many needs of a baby.

**Of course they don’t think it’s a violation because they don’t take the set of mammalian needs seriously.

*** In the USA, everyone under 50 has numerous health disadvantages compared to citizens in 16 other developed nations (National Research Council, 2013).

NOTE: Of course, every human community is not perfect but when you provide young children with their basic needs, they are less aggressive and self-centered. They are less preoccupied with what they want because they got all they wanted when they needed it in early life. The baby nest described above makes for a smart, healthy, well-functioning body and brain, with high emotional intelligence and self control. They are more socially skilled and empathic towards others. All this makes getting along with others so much easier. All this will have to be explained more thoroughly in another post, citing the anthropology research that shows what people in small-band hunter-gatherer communities are like.

Ingold, T. (1999). On the social relations of the hunter-gatherer band. In R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 399–410). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Narvaez, D. (2013). Development and socialization within an evolutionary context: Growing Up to Become "A good and useful human being." In D. Fry (Ed.), War, Peace and Human Nature: The convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views (pp. 341-358). New York: Oxford University Press.

Narvaez, D. (forthcoming). Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

National Research Council. (2013). U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Schore, A. (1994). Affect regulation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Schore, A.N. (2002). Dysregulation of the right brain: a fundamental mechanism of traumatic attachment and the psychopathogenesis of posttraumatic stress disorder. Australian & New Zealand Journal ofPsychiatry, 36, 9-30.

NOTE on BASIC ASSUMPTIONS: When I write about parenting, I assume the importance of the evolved developmental niche (EDN) for raising human infants (which initially arose over 30 million years ago with the emergence of the social mammals and has been slightly altered among human groups based on anthropological research).

The EDN is the baseline I use for determining what fosters optimal human health, wellbeing and compassionate morality. The niche includes at least the following: infant-initiated breastfeeding for several years, nearly constant touch, responsiveness to needs so the young child does not get distressed, playful companionship, multiple adult caregivers, positive social support, and natural childbirth.

All these characteristics are linked to health in mammalian and human studies (see Narvaez, Panksepp, Schore & Gleason, 2013, for a review.) Thus, shifts away from the EDN baseline are risky. My comments and posts stem from these basic assumptions.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will attend the evening of prayer and music on Sunday at the Vatican Gardens.

By Edward Pentin | National Catholic Register | 06/06/2014

VATICAN CITY — An evening of prayer and music in the Vatican Gardens will be the format of the much-anticipated prayer for peace with Israeli and Palestinian Presidents and Pope Francis on Pentecost Sunday.

Called “Invocation for Peace,” the initiative comes after Pope Francis, following celebration of Mass in Bethlehem on May 25, invited both Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the Vatican to pray for an end to the conflict in the Holy Land. Both leaders quickly accepted the invitation.

At a Vatican briefing today, Franciscan Father Pier Battista Pizzaballa, custos of the Holy Land, and Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, told reporters the prayer meeting will begin with Peres and Abbas arriving at the Vatican within 15-20 minutes of each other, respectively at 6:15pm and 6:30pm local time.

Father Lombardi said the Holy Father will receive both men individually at the entrance of his St. Martha residence and speak briefly with each of them, after which all three will meet in the hall of the residence. Patriarch Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, will also accompany them, having arrived in Rome on Saturday evening.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam

The four will then leave the residence by car, arrive at the gardens and take their places. The evening will begin at 7pm with a musical introduction and an explanation in English of the structure and form of the celebration, which will follow the chronological order of the three major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The part of the ceremony dedicated to Judaism will begin with a prayer for creation, followed by music, then another prayer invoking forgiveness. More music will be followed by a prayer invoking peace and concluding with a traditional Jewish musical meditation. All the prayers will be in Hebrew.

Christian prayers on the same themes will follow, first in English, then in Italian and finally in Arabic. Each will similarly be interspersed with music and end with a Christian musical meditation. The third part of the ceremony will contain Muslim prayers in Arabic on the same themes, interrupted by music and concluding with a Muslim musical meditation.

A reader will then introduce in English the final part of the celebration, beginning with Pope Francis’ discourse invoking peace. The Holy Father will then invite each of the two presidents to formulate his own invocation. Shimon Peres will begin, followed by Mahmoud Abbas.

As a gesture of peace, in which Patriarch Bartholomew will also participate, all the participants will shake hands. The Pope will then accompany them in planting an olive tree, as a symbol of peace.

‘Not Praying Together But Coming Together to Pray’

At the end of the celebration, the four will remain side by side while the delegations, up to a maximum of 20 people, will greet them. The Holy Father, the two presidents and the Patriarch will then proceed to the Casina Pio IV, the villa that is home to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The Holy Father will then speak to them in private.

Peres and Mahmoud will then leave the Vatican, while Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew will return to the St. Martha residence.

It’s not clear how much time will be allotted to silent prayer, but Father Pizzaballa stressed that at such occasions as this, in view of the theological and liturgical differences among those present, followers of the three monotheistic religions “do not pray together, but we come together to pray.”

The “Invocation for Peace” is the second major papal prayer initiative aimed at helping to resolve a global conflict, and shows the Pope’s belief that prayer can be a genuine force for achieving peace. Last September, Francis called on the whole Church to pray for an end to the fighting in Syria. Although the fighting continues, many believe the initiative miraculously helped avert what looked like being an inevitable and potentially catastrophic escalation of the conflict.

This initiative takes place after the latest U.S.-brokered peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians collapsed at the end of April.

“Behind this idea is that men on their own cannot make it,” Australia’s ambassador to the Holy See, John McCarthy, told the Register. “They need the assistance of God and the Holy Spirit to be able to move forward.” He added that especially in areas of conflict and dispute, Pope Francis wants “in a profound way” to bring the “power and the spirit of the Lord to the ends of the world."

“We saw that over Syria, and we see it over this,” McCarthy said.

In today’s briefing with reporters, Father Pizzaballa stressed the Pope does not want to enter into the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but to “reopen a road that has been closed for a long time” and to awaken in the souls of everyone “the desire for peace.”

“Nobody presumes to believe that after this meeting peace will burst forth in the Holy Land,” he said, but added that “everyone hopes something will change because all are tired.”

Multi-Faith Delegations

The delegations at Sunday’s ceremony will be multi-religious. The Israeli party will include the spiritual leader of the Druze faith in Israel, Sheikh Moafaq Tarif, as well as Rabbi Rasson Arussi of the Chief Rabbinate Council, and Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee and adviser to the Chief Rabbinate.

The Palestinian delegation will include Palestine’s former minister for religious affairs, Mahmoud Al Habbash, Sheikh Jamal abu Alhanoud of the Palestinian Sharia Courts, and the retired Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Michel Sabbah.

The meeting will also be attended by Rabbi Abraham Skorka and the Islamic leader Omar Abboud, both longtime friends of Pope Francis from Argentina. They also accompanied him on his visit to the Holy Land.

Father Lombardi said Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI won’t be attending but will be taking part in the meeting through heartfelt prayer, “like all of those who realize the importance of this event.”

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Lord, Please walk beside me through this day. Clear the heavy air with the lightness of Your Presence. Guide my hands and steady my heart that I may give comfort when I cannot give hope, that I may give relief when I do not have a cure, and that I may radiate Your healing peace when the limits of science, time, and the human body overwhelm us all.Amen